There was a push a while back to call it bank fraud. Because the banks are the victims and should be responsible to protect/insure themselves.

By calling it identity theft, we are saying individuals are the victims and should protect the banks from someone pretending to be them.

Edit: I also believe there was an argument that banks reporting to credit agencies based on fraudulent activity from a 3rd party should be treated as libel.

> I also believe there was an argument that banks reporting to credit agencies based on fraudulent activity from a 3rd party should be treated as libel.

This is interesting - do you know if it has ever been tested?

I don't know, and I don't even remember where I heard it, I think it was on here but I dont know. I think maybe I was wrong about 'bank fraud' and the term being pushed was 'bank libel' instead of identity theft. Because all the negative sides of supposed 'identity theft' were from the banks saying the individual did something they did not.

I’d donate to gofundme for the legal costs next time it comes up…

Every bank I deal with (3 of them) take responsibility for any claims from identity theft/bank fraud. Looks like the push worked!

If a bank allows someone to open up a bank account with personal details that don't really belong to them, I'd call that fraud and a failure on the banks side. "Stealing someone's identity" sounds like I could and should have been able to prevent that, rather than putting the blame on the bank who accepted false personal details in the first place.

As I said, those details, including address and more, are public in some countries. Those countries have learned to live that just being able to say my name, date of birth, address and telephone number is not enough to open a bank account, why can other "modern" countries not adjust accordingly too?

Rather than just banks, you can say it is also a systemic problem if the details like ssn is such an important number yet it is so easily obtained.

There is a reason why the majority of these frauds are US based

Unless the thief gets their hands on my ID and personal ID number (similar to social security), they're not getting there.

Now if they do that, changing in particular the latter is rather hard.

There’s a funny Mitchell and Webb sketch about it: https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E

Wonderful! I will be sharing this one a lot. Thank you.